Posts Tagged ‘Google’

A Google executive recently said the cloud computing market in 2012 will focus more on mobile devices and social networking in order to keep pace with businesses’ interests. Amit Singh, vice president of Google Enterprise, told eWeek that the cloud trend next year will try to move businesses more into the realm of teamwork from the era of individual production.

With the move more into social networking, Singh said Google is trying to push forward the integration ability of its social networking website Google+. Singh said businesses will start using more of a BYOD, or bring your own device, approach when it comes to using mobile devices at work. Peter Coffee of Salesforce.com said he sees the cloud helping users break through with features and capabilities they may not have had before, such as the ability to create a document on one device and view it on another.

“People do not want to be burdened by what device is holding a piece of content,” said Coffee, who added that having content that is device-neutral will be important for everyone in the business world.

Gartner’s predictions for the future of cloud computing agrees with Singh’s prediction, adding that by 2016, 50 percent of cloud-based email users will rely on a browser, tablet or mobile device instead of a desktop.

Though Android Ice Cream Sandwich is only available for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus right now, it’s done enough to make us Android 2.3 users pretty dissatisfied with our perfectly decent OS. If reports are accurate, the update floodgates should be set to open – starting with the Google Nexus S.

The Google Nexus S is the former lead Android device and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus’s immediate predecessor. It’s a decent phone, with a 4-inch Super AMOLED display and a 1GHz single-core processor. It didn’t rock people’s world half as much as the Galaxy Nexus has, though.

Still, one of the key benefits of Google Nexus S ownership over the past 12 months or so has been priority updates – and that seems to be the case even with the next gen Android Ice Cream Sandwich too.

According to a number of Google+ postings, Google is in the process of testing its new OS on its old Nexus S device. How is it doing this testing? By using its own employees as guinea pigs, of course.

Google and Apple have stepped up their corporate battle with the launch this week of music services for their smartphone platforms.

Android handset users in the US will now be able to get access to Google Music, where the search engine company has signed up the main music labels except, so far, Warner Music.

The service is not available outside the US because Google has not completed negotiations with record labels to allow it to sell songs elsewhere.

The Google Music offering comes with exclusive content from the Rolling Stones, Coldplay, Busta Rhymes, Shakira, Pearl Jam and the Dave Matthews Band.

Songs are available in MP3 format encoded at 320Kbps. Song prices range from 69c to 99c and $1.29, the same as on Apple’s iTunes.

The absence of Warner Music means Google Music will lack some famous names such as Led Zeppelin and Prince which are available on rival stores such as Apple’s iTunes.

“They’ve got to get that [music] catalog filled pretty quickly,” said Mike McGuire, an analyst at industry research firm Gartner. “It’s a launch, but it’s kind of like a work-in-progress.”

Analysts say selling online music is unlikely to provide much of a lift to Google’s revenue. But they say Google needs to be in the market to ensure that its Android-based mobile efforts can match offerings from competitors.

Android is the world’s No. 1 smartphone operating system, powering about 200m devices worldwide. But without a music service, Android-based smartphones and tablets may not be as attractive to consumers seeking a product that offers a seamless media experience.

The service costs $25 per year, leading Jamie Rosenberg, Google’s director of digital content for Android, to take a dig at it: “Other cloud music services think you have to pay to listen to music you already own. We don’t,” he said.

Although it replaced the command with a new operator, (“quotation marks”) Google has admitted that users still aren’t entirely happy. Corin Anderson, Google’s Principle Engineer for Search says “we’ve received a lot of requests for a more deliberate way to tell Google to search using your exact terms. We’ve been listening, and starting today you’ll be able to do just that through verbatim search.”

Verbatim search is a way for users to make all of their searches specific, without the need to enter another command with every query. Once the Verbatim tool is turned on, all searches will be conducted as if each phrase was wrapped with quotation marks.

This means that Google will not apply certain search tweaks to the query, such as; making automatic spelling corrections, personalizing the search, including synonyms of search terms, finding results that match similar terms to those in the query, searching for words with the same stem, and making some terms optional.

To turn the tool on users need to click on the ‘More search tools’ option in the left hand options bar, and select Verbatim. The tool needs to be selected each time Google is opened but will apply to each query in that session once it is selected.